Colourful Textures Filling the Frame

We judges never know what to expect when we set our challenges but always hope to be pleasantly surprised by the entries. This one is so original and so perfectly on brief that it went straight to number one in my top ten. One has to keep an open mind when on the lookout for things to photograph on the street and you have been rewarded with an exceptional find. Well done for spotting the potential of your well-composed, colourfully-textured winner.

This could be an aerial view of dry, red sand, river beds breaking up the landscape with trickles of meandering water. Falling metamorphic slate rocks cascade down the hill towards the barren sands like three-dimensional gradients on an ordinance survey map. Your enticing photo of an abstract tree bark certainly provoked my imagination - I wonder if you saw what I saw?

A good abstract, in my opinion, is one which fires the imagination. This close-up of a gumtree bark transported me to a magical underground world. I could see an undulating canyon wall with torchlit flames lighting up the textured surfaces of stone crevices and caves. At any moment I expected the adventurer Indiana Jones to emerge as a tiny figure from a scene resembling ‘Raiders Of The Lost Ark’. Thank you for stimulating my imagination.

This is a very well-spotted abstract. You have noticed the fissures in the rocks are like branches of trees but the piece-de-resistance are the flakes of golden lichens. They resemble autumn-coloured oak leaves clinging to the rock’s cracked surface. Your textured composition fills the frame beautifully and, unusually in this challenge, it actually tells a story.

I’ve often admired the fluorescent patterns left languishing on concrete streets by petrol leaked from car engines but never managed to capture them as subtly as you have. The composition is like a zooming photo taken from a spaceship approaching the curvature of a distant heavenly body. I can see rocks and craters over the rainbow-coloured lustre of what could be a habitable planet - especially for petrolheads!

I love how the elongated smooth surfaces lead the eye down to the textured ends of your multicoloured pencils. The vertical, rainbow pencils are aesthetically laid on top of each other with the emphasis on the bottom half of your composition. You must have drawn on all your resources to assemble your simple, well-executed macro still life. It’s down to your expertise that the photo is as pin sharp as the points of your coloured pencils.

Of all the feather-textured photos entered into this challenge I was drawn to yours. You were wise to photograph a cygnet instead of its parents because that’s where all the subdued colours were to be found. I like how the white feather tips look like snow-capped trees bending in the landscape wind. This is a beautifully composed section of a fledgling’s plumage. One small gripe though - I would have touched out the black imperfection in the top left hand corner to make your entry absolutely perfect.

These mysterious wavy-lined textures in your cutting edge composition are so enthralling they immediately piqued my curiosity. They’ve like a geological cross-section of a multicoloured marble mountain made all the more intriguing by being punctuated by protruding jigsaw-shaped ends. Layers and layers of undulating ripples stretching diagonally across the frame without any indication of what they are was the fascination of your right-angled transection.

On first sight I thought this must be a close up photo of an existing oil painting and almost dismissed it as not being original enough. When I realised what it was, I immediately placed it in my top ten. I could make out two angst-ridden eyes surrounded by the texture of nature’s brushstroke embedded with gritty sand. The reason I thought it was a painting was because it reminded me of the background swirls in ‘The Scream’ by Edvard Munch. A great artistic result for a piece of driftwood found on the shores of the Pacific.

Of all the entries displaying full frame objects this has to be the most original. Who would have thought that taking a photo of scaffolding fixtures could be so riveting. Yet the colour tones of various metal parts caught in the light had me mesmerised There’s a nice balance between the three-dimensional, jigsaw-looking pieces and the nuts and bolts sticking out from them. Judging by your high ISO the photo must have been taken in semi darkness so you’ve done really well in controlling the light levels in post-processing.